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Director's meeting with Saudi Arabia's minister of communications and information technology

This week with NSF Director Panchanathan

This week, U.S. National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan underscored the importance of investing in innovative science and…
December 1, 2023
Research News
A view of epiphytic plants in a rainforest canopy; the plants face growing threats.

Epiphytes, plants such as moss and bromeliads found in trees, face growing threats

Orchids, mosses and ferns — or epiphytes, defined as nonparasitic plants that grow on other plants — are crucial for Earth's biodiversity and play…
November 30, 2023
Research News
A new study's conclusions depend on long-term data on gray whale prey in the Bering Strait region.

Gray whale die-offs driven by food supply swings in changing Arctic conditions

A long-term Arctic biological data set maintained by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) scientists has been instrumental…
November 30, 2023
Research News
Research develops approach to making smaller, more powerful, safer electric vehicle batteries.

Researchers develop promising approach to smaller, more powerful, safer electric vehicle batteries

Two factors dominate the development of batteries for electric vehicles: power, which determines the vehicle range; and cost, critical in the…
November 28, 2023
Research News
A lunar zircon grain under a microscope.

The moon is 40M years older than previously thought

By analyzing tiny lunar zircon crystals gathered by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, researchers recalculated the age of the Earth's moon. Although…
November 28, 2023
Research News
This Jamaican fruit bat, Artibeus jamaicensis, has a short jaw, like many noctilionoid fruit-eating bats.

Fruit, nectar, bugs and blood: How bat teeth and jaws evolved for a diverse dinnertime

They don't know it, but Charles Darwin's finches changed the world. These closely related species — native to the Galapagos Islands — each sport a…
November 21, 2023
Research News
Sensors capture calf muscles' electrical activity and tell a prosthesis which artificial muscle to flex.

Robotic prosthetic ankles improve 'natural' movement, stability

Robotic prosthetic ankles controlled by nerve impulses allow amputees to move more "naturally," thereby improving their stability, according to a new…
November 21, 2023
NSF News
Moderator Chad Gaffield interviews (from left) Paul Wells, Leslie Church, and NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan at the 2023 Canadian Science Policy Conference.

NSF Director Panchanathan headlines the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa, signs international collaboration arrangement

In mid-November, U.S. National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan traveled to Ottawa, Canada, where he signed a bilateral research…
November 20, 2023
Research News
Methane clathrate (white, ice-like material) under a rock from the seafloor of the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Novel bacterial proteins from seafloor shine light on climate and astrobiology

Gigatons of greenhouse gas are trapped under the seafloor, and that's a good thing. Around the coasts of the continents, where slopes sink down into…
November 16, 2023
Research News
Scientists have pieced together the long history of two parrots, Cuban and Hispaniolan parrots.

Caribbean parrots thought to be endemic are relicts of millennial-scale extinction

In a study supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and published in the journal PNAS, researchers have extracted the first ancient…
November 16, 2023
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